Broken REM Cycle
by Marathon Zack 140.6
Summary: Penny has too much to drink. Who will be there to take care of her? SHENNY One-Shot.


**A/N: Dear Shenny-haters; I love all your negative reviews. Seeing Lenny/Shamies squirm is a beautiful sight, and let's me know I'm writing things right. It also boosts my number of reviews, making my stories look more popular than they would otherwise. So Thank You.**

* * *

It was the middle of the night, and Sheldon's REM cycle had suddenly been broken by a loud retching noise coming from their bathroom. After a few more minutes of the infernal din, Sheldon got up to go tell Leonard to vomit more quietly. But when he opened the door to their bathroom, he took in the sight of a certain blonde neighbor, head resting on the toilet seat.

"Are you sick?" he asked tentatively, pulling the collar of his pajamas over his nose.

The blonde looked up at him, and slowly shook her head, cringing at the headache and nausea it gave her, before immediately leaning back down and puking again. When Penny had shook her head to say she wasn't sick, Sheldon had closed the bathroom door behind him.

Looking back up, she finally spoke; "No, just drunk. I apparently went to the wrong door. I didn't realize this was your bathroom until now."

"How did you get in?"

Holding up her key ring, she mumbled, "Spare key number three," before turning back to the toilet and throwing up again. But this time, Sheldon caught her hair and held it out of her face. Penny almost didn't notice that his fingertips had brushed the side of her neck as he gathered up her hair. As it was, she was too sick to think about it.

For the next hour, Sheldon sat beside Penny, holding her hair out of her face when she felt the need to throw up. When she had finally stopped throwing up, Sheldon got her a wet towel clean up with. Sheldon helped her stand up, and she took a few wobbling steps towards the bathroom door. As Sheldon threw the washcloth in the hamper, and quickly cleaned the toilet, Penny stumbled down the hall. Despite no longer throwing up, she was clearly still drunk, and knew there was no way she was getting to her apartment. So she stumbled into Sheldon's open room, and collapsed on his bed face first.

A few minutes later, Sheldon entered, and after closing the door, turned around and saw her lying on his bed.

"Penny…"

She just patted the other side of the bed. Staring at her for a few seconds, he knew there was no way she was moving on her own (he wasn't entirely sure if she even could, she had been pretty wobbly leaving the bathroom), and he wasn't strong enough to physically carry her to her apartment. So with a mumbled growl, he finally walked around to the empty side of the bed.

* * *

A few hours later, Sheldon awoke again. Barely opening his eyes, he could see Penny getting off the bed. Pretending to be asleep, he proceeded to watch her, hoping she was leaving for her own apartment. Instead, she simply unzipped her dress, let it drop into a puddle around her feet, and climbed into his bed, under the sheets this time.

Sheldon wasn't sure if he was more distraught by the fact she was in his bed, half-naked, or that she had just left her clothes in a mess on his floor. If she was going to be in his bedroom, and invade his space, the least she could do was fold her clothes neatly instead of just leaving them lying around willy-nilly. Then again, there was a chance she was still drunk; pretty girls like her didn't consciously try to sleep with guys like him.

As she was staying on her side of the bed, and not snoring, Sheldon slowly fell back to sleep. But he could still feel her body heat radiating off of her.

* * *

The sun was trying to shine in through the covered windows when Penny awoke the next morning. Through a splitting headache, she cracked open her eyes, and took in her surroundings; familiar, yet definitely not her bedroom. The large number of comic book memorabilia and model trains, and her pounding brain eventually put together that she was in Sheldon's room. Slowly turning her head to the other side, and softly cursing the increased light, she saw that she was alone. However, the sheets were folded back, and a quick feel of Sheldon's side of the bed, which was still slightly warm, told her that Sheldon had in fact slept there last night. That was when she also realized she was half-naked.

Slowly getting out of bed, she looked at her dress lying on the floor. She wasn't putting that back on. Knowing she would get an earful later, she opened one of his drawers, and pulled out a Back Widow shirt she'd never seen him wear. Fortunately it was long enough she didn't have to try to find any shorts to borrow as well.

She slowly and cautiously opened the door, making her way towards the kitchen, afraid of what she would find.

"Good morning, Penny," said Sheldon, as she shuffled into the kitchen.

Penny noticed that Leonard was there as well, but she was too hungover to deal with him at the moment, so she went straight to Sheldon, whining for some miraculous cure to the massive hangover she was nursing. Nodding in response to her request, he set about making her some tea, before starting to cook breakfast. He also handed her a water bottle from the fridge, and a few pills out of the cabinet.

In the meantime, Leonard was staring back and forth between them, unsure of what was going on, not wanting to think about where Penny had come from. So when Sheldon asked him if he was staying for breakfast, he numbly shook his head and beat a quick retreat out of the apartment.

While Sheldon cooked breakfast, Penny laid her head against the cool surface of the island, willing her brain to stop bouncing around her skull like a pinball machine. The sharp clatter of a plate being set next to her head got her attention rather painfully, and she sat up. She slowly began to eat the breakfast he had cooked her and drink the tea he had made her, trying to work up the courage to ask the questions that had been revolving in her head ever since she'd woken up.

"Sheldon, what the hell happened last night?" wincing at the sound of her voice.

"You don't remember?"

"No, I don't," she growled, irritated.

"What do you remember?"

"I went to a party. Had a few drinks, nothing unusual, danced." She paused. "Then a friend of mine came up with two drinks, and said I absolutely had to try it. Said it was considered by some guide to be the best drink in existence. Called it a, Pan Galactic Google Blast, or something like that. Gave some description of its effects. Can't remember that part."

"Like having your brains smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick," said Sheldon quietly.

"Yeah, that. And then I remember starting to drink it, and don't remember anything after that until I woke up this morning. In your bed. Naked."

They both fell silent.

"Wait, how do you know the description? You don't drink," she asked in confusion.

"Just because I don't drink doesn't mean I don't know the names of drinks," Sheldon replied in a condescending voice. "Especially that one, since it's more than just a drink," he mumbled quietly to himself as Penny said, "Working knowledge of the universe and all that, yeah, yeah, yeah."

A few minutes later, Penny started to speak again; "Did we...wait, I really don't want to know."

They finished breakfast in silence. As Sheldon began to clean up the plates, he asked, "Are you going to be capable of working your shift this afternoon?"

"I think so. The headache's started to go down some, and there's still several hours before my shift starts. Are you not playing paintball this morning?"

"Howard and Raj are away at a conference this weekend."

"Ah. Well, thank you for breakfast, and helping reduce this hangover. Maybe I'll see you after work."

"The new Doctor Who episode will be on at 21:00," she heard him call out as she closed the door.

It wasn't until she got to her bathroom and took it off that she realized Sheldon hadn't said anything about his shirt she had borrowed.

* * *

When Penny left for work a few hours later, she was quite content not knowing if anything had happened between them last night. If it had, Sheldon was taking it well, and there was no reason to drag up anything that might cause things to become awkward. If nothing had happened, then it obviously didn't matter.

However, as her shift wore on, it kept nagging at the back of her mind. She really didn't like not knowing. And while finding out could cause more problems than it solved, it just wouldn't leave her alone.

Looking at her phone when she got back to the apartment after her shift, she saw that she had 5 min to make it up to Sheldon's apartment before the show started. She really hoped he had something for her to eat.

She opened the door to 4A without knocking, and looking around, was pleased to see that Leonard was nowhere to be seen. Looking at Sheldon, she said, "Two questions. One, where's Leonard, and two, do you have any food?"

Not looking away from the tv, Sheldon said, "Your's is in the fridge, and Leonard is presumably at Leslie's, assuming she accepted his offer."

Grabbing her take-out out of the fridge, she sat down next to him in her spot, saying, "Thanks for the food, and I don't want any details on that offer."

At that moment Doctor Who came on, and for the next 45 minutes they sat there in comfortable silence. Once the show finished, Sheldon flipped the tv off, and they continued to sit there in a slightly more awkward silence. Well, at least Penny did, Sheldon seemed to be completely comfortable. After a few minutes, she broke the silence:

"I know I said I didn't want to know what happened, but it's been bothering me all day."

Sheldon turned slightly to face her. "At 01:20, I awoke to the sound of retching coming from our bathroom. As it continued, and I knew I wouldn't be falling back to sleep, I went to the bathroom to tell Leonard to vomit more quietly. At which point I saw it was you, and not Leonard. After confirming that you were drunk and not sick, I proceeded to hold your long hair out of your face so that you would not vomit in it. You told me that you had mistakenly entered our apartment using your spare key, and were unaware it was the wrong apartment until I came in. Approximately an hour later, you had stopped throwing up enough to leave. At which point, instead of going to your own apartment, you stumbled into my room and fell onto my bed, and refused to move."

"But, then, how did I end up naked and under the covers?"

"A few hours later you woke up again, and for some inexplicable reason proceeded to take off your dress and climb into my bed, instead of just lying on top of it. A few hours late I woke up at my regular time, took a shower, and went into the kitchen to make breakfast, at which point you entered, and I believe you should remember the rest from there."

"So, we _didn't_ have sex?" she asked cautiously.

"Of course not!" he objected forcefully. "You were drunk!"

 _Wait, does that mean he possibly would have had sex with me if I hadn't been drunk?_ briefly flirted through her mind, before she nodded her head.

After a few moments, she asked, "When you saw it was me, why didn't you wake Leonard to take care of me? I know you don't like bodily fluids and all the germs that come with it, and we both know Leonard would have been more than happy to take care of me."

"Because you were in need of someone to take care of you, not someone who would take advantage of you given the opportunity. And in your inebriated state, we both know that would have most likely happened."

After taking a few seconds to process what he had said, she leaned over to him and gave him a soft hug, resting her head on his shoulder, and whispered, "Thank you." She wanted to say more, but she couldn't put it into words, and knew he understood.

A few minutes later, Sheldon quietly said, "Penny, it's my bedtime."

Penny let go of her hug, briefly running her hand over his arm as she leaned back against the couch. Sheldon stood up, before turning back and looking down at her.

"Are you coming?"

Her eyes grew wide with surprise. "You're asking me to join you? To share your bed with you again?"

"I thought that was rather obvious."

"And you realize that would require me being in your room?"

"Consider my bed is in my room, that is rather obvious," he replied, as though talking to child.

"Why?"

At this he looked down at the floor, and despite the darkness of the room, she thought she saw blush creep across his face.

"For reasons unknown, despite the short and highly interrupted amount of REM sleep I got last night, I woke up more refreshed than would typically be expected given the amount of sleep I did get. I believe in the common vernacular the phrase would be, I enjoyed your presence last night and would like to repeat the experience," he mumbled to his feet.

Penny smiled at his shyness, before stepping over to him and laying her hand lightly on his chest, replying, "Let me go change into sleep clothes, and I'll be right over."

* * *

As she crawled into his bed ten minutes later, she said, "I'm surprised you haven't said anything about me borrowing your shirt."

"It was intended to be your birthday present in a few weeks," he replied softly. "Though I must say, I am happy to see you wearing it again tonight. Goodnight, Penny."

"Goodnight, Sheldon."

* * *

 **A/N: My head cannon about "spare key number three" is that, especially after being locked out of his apartment and Penny having left her spare in his apartment, Sheldon would have given her multiple spare keys. One of which she keeps on her key ring.**


End file.
